Whether you’ve been in business for a while or are just starting out, the number of options available to market your business can be overwhelming. Setting goals and making a plan are the keys to success in accomplishing your marketing goals and building up your overall business. There are a multitude of strategies that can be used to market your business on Facebook. Some of these are can be fairly inexpensive, or even free, and others can have potentially higher costs. The best part is you can choose exactly how much you want to invest in your business.

Why choose Facebook for your marketing needs?

With its millions of users each day, Facebook is one of the best and cheapest options when it comes to marketing your small business. Facebook has worked diligently to create a place for businesses and customers to find and engage one another. The site uses knowledge you have of your business and blends it with their own knowledge of the people using Facebook. This allows you to create relationships with new and established customers and other connections to those in your same business field. This ultimately leads to an increase in your digital presence and brand recognition. It also helps build online and in store sales through those customer interactions.

Establishing your presence on Facebook

The first step is to create your business’s presence through the use of profiles, fan pages, groups, and events. The profile page is one of the first options when building your presence because it allows you to choose yourself or your business as the main focal point. Choose a profile picture, such as your logo, that exemplifies your business or you as a representative of your business. Begin to build up your friends list by inviting friends and family, existing customers and potential customers to ‘like’ your page. This provides the platform and ability to market to a target audience through the posts on your profile page. Take advantage of the albums to share photos and videos highlighting your business, products and services.

Fan pages are another option when looking into marketing your business. These are built through page likes, post clicks, and post engagements. These pages are great for dedicated pages to your business because they allow anyone to visit the page and click to ‘like’ the page itself or the posts shared on the page.

Groups and events are perfect for engaging people by bringing them together under a similar interest. This is a great opportunity to promote and generate excitement for an upcoming event.

Using a combination of these tools can assist in building up your business’s presence and its reputation on Facebook. This can go a long way in furthering your business goals. It will also make it easier to implement the next set of tips and tricks in obtaining a broader customer base.

Tips to market your business with Facebook

Before starting your marketing strategy consider your options based on your business goals and objectives. Decide whether you’re looking for page likes, driving traffic back to your site, or engagement. You’ll need to decide which objective is the key to obtaining your marketing goals before moving forward. If you’re new to this arena, consider going with page likes as your initial goal. This strategy can be easier because the capabilities of this objective are generated from a simpler standpoint than with engagements, which take more work and dedication on your part.

The following tips and tricks are based off marketing techniques you can implement through the use of Facebook to see boosts in customers and in sales.

Build your visual brand.

When establishing your online presence with Facebook, keep your branding consistent. Your profile picture and cover photo should represent your brand and stand out among the crowd. Keep the photos clean and crisp by using the largest photos available to you. Consider updating them on a semi-regular basis to keep your page looking fresh and exciting to old and new customers.

Make each post count.

Use your posts to keep friends and followers updated on your business. Provide information that your audience will find useful. Know your target audience and make sure the tone and language you use within your written content speaks to your specific audience. Be authentic in your interactions and stay consistent in your brand’s voice. Post often and be consistent. Be sure to share fresh, unique and informative content that your audience will find useful and engaging. Keep your posts relatively short and to the point since longer posts can be rather tedious to read.

Utilize tags.

Engage your followers by tagging your existing customers, potential customers, collaborators and partners in posts. Make sure that you are using tags thoughtfully and not spamming your followers. This will likely lead them to unlike your page. For example, post a ‘thank you’ to a recent client once a project is wrapped up and tag them or their business in your post. This same concept also works with the use of hashtags. Help people find your posts that are relevant to them through your hashtags.

Show support for your customers.

Tagging and talking about your customers is a great way to show them support, especially if they are a business owner. ‘Like’ and ‘share’ their page, when appropriate. Visit the pages of your followers and other pages that interest you or benefit your business in some way and leave comments or share their posts. This can result in more generated interest for your page as well. So, when you have some spare time, actively look through and comment, “like, or “share” other pages’ content because this can prove just as beneficial to you as to them.

Use Facebook specific rewards.

Rewarding your loyal fans with exclusive Facebook offers can go a long way in keeping customers coming back. It can also bring in new customers as they talk about, ‘like’, and ‘share’ your page with their friends and family. You can provide them with special exclusive offers, such as a discount at your local or online store. 

Consider paid advertisements.

When it comes to Facebook’s paid advertisements, there are some special considerations to research before committing. First, you’ll want to establish a budget. Facebook allows you to set your own budget ranging from relatively inexpensive to rather pricey. It all depends on the numbers you want to reach with your ads and/or page promotions. You can then work on targeting the ideal audience for your business based on their interests and their age ranges. You can see how these choices affect your overall reach with your page and your ads. As for the ads themselves, you’ll find ads with lots of visuals do better than those with a lot of reading involved. Use large, brand consistent, visuals whenever possible. Use only a line or two of text to entice customers to your page to learn more about your business. Implement calls to action in order to persuade customers to come to you.

The tips described are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways to market your business on Facebook. You can pick and choose the ones you’d like to try out first before moving onto others on this list. Marketing on Facebook can provide your business with some of the best customer relations and skyrocketing sales your business has ever seen. It just takes dedication and effort on your part to make it happen. Starting your marketing journey can be fun and relatively easy if you follow these outlined steps.